In Paris, Justice Takes Center Stage

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Satoshi Miyagi’s production of “Révélation Red in Blue Trilogie,” by the Cameroon-born French author Léonora Miano.CreditCreditSimon Gosselin

By Laura Cappelle

Oct. 19, 2018

PARIS — Justice and entertainment rarely mix in France. There is no equivalent here of the televised trials that have gripped the United States, because filming and recording are forbidden in the courtroom. American legal dramas also outnumber homegrown ones on television, and for fans of “Law and Order,” disappointment looms in France’s trials: Since the system is inquisitorial rather than adversarial, dramatic objections are frowned upon.

Yet justice — its rhetoric and its travails — is at the heart of several new theater productions in Paris. While Satoshi Miyagi’s production of “Révélation Red in Blue Trilogie” addresses reparations for the dead, Eric Théobald’s “Plaidoiries” and Salomé Lelouch’s “Justice” bring aspects of the legal system to the stage.

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Richard Berry in “Plaidoiries” at the Théâtre Antoine.CreditCéline Nieszawer

“Plaidoiries,” which means “Pleadings,” is performed by a single actor, Richard Berry, at the Théâtre Antoine, and resurrects the closing arguments of five attorneys in cases that had significant public impact in France. The oldest, in 1972, paved the way for the legalization of abortion here; the most recent, from 2009, involved a woman, Véronique Courjault, who killed three of her babies.

The production is based on a book by Matthieu Aron, a longtime court reporter who is now deputy editor in chief at the newsmagazine L’Obs. Without recordings, French trial arguments are generally lost to posterity; to counter that, Mr. Aron opted to reconstruct 45 of them, using his own notes as well as shorthand court archives and lawyers’ copies of their arguments.

“Plaidoiries” adapts them back for live audiences and, in the process, recaptures crucial moments in French history. Mr. Théobald, a former member of the Comédie-Française who crossed over into privately funded theater, understands this; as the director, he clears the way for the text, with just two lecterns onstage and small screens where a few archival videos and the written verdicts and sentences of each trial are projected.

In Mr. Berry, who is famous in France as a film actor and director, he has found a choice orator. The setup is straightforward: After donning a lawyer’s robe, Mr. Berry, 68, moves between the two lecterns as he progresses from case to case. His sober manner focuses attention on the rhetorical craft and diversity of the arguments.

Only one side of the arguments is presented for each trial, and strikingly, nearly all the lawyers involved lost their battles, yet all had a larger social impact. Christian Ranucci was one of the last men to be sentenced to death and guillotined in France, in 1976, for the murder of an 8-year-old girl. The impassioned closing arguments of one of his lawyers, Paul Lombard, make the case for his innocence. Mr. Lombard’s admission that his unsympathetic client made for a poor defendant — with “eyes like a dead fish” — leads into a denunciation of both the death penalty and the role of public opinion (“a prostitute that shouldn’t be allowed in courtrooms,” as Mr. Lombard puts it) in the trial.

It’s a brilliant, combative speech, and while unsuccessful, it proved a steppingstone on the way to the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. (Few remember that guillotines were still used fairly recently.) Similarly, the arguments against Maurice Papon, convicted of crimes against humanity in 1998 for his part in the deportation of Jews under the Vichy government between 1942 and 1944, are a powerful reminder of recent French history.

Other battles resonate even more strongly now. The electrocution of two boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who had taken refuge in a power station because they believed they were being chased by the police, led to the 2005 riots in Paris’s outer suburbs — and the trial of the police officers evokes complaints about police brutality around the world.

As for Gisèle Halimi’s astonishing speech in defense of a teenage girl and her relatives, on trial for abortion after a rape in 1972, much of it would still apply in many countries, and Mr. Berry recreates it with self-effacing sensitivity. There is poetic justice in seeing a man reprise a case that prompted Ms. Halimi to declare: “Look at us: four women appearing before four men. It’s already a sign of the oppressive system we live under.”

“Justice,” a play by Samantha Markowic, explores a more mundane side of the French legal system: the fast-track, summary trial system for petty crimes. Ms. Markowic, an actor and playwright, was inspired by her own experience of a violent street mugging. When her complaint was dismissed, she decided to spend time in a Paris courtroom to better understand its inner workings.

The production at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, directed by Ms. Lelouch, has three actors playing judges, lawyers, police officers, defendants and even a court-appointed psychiatrist. The cases are provocative in the best sense of the word. From a drug addict accused of violence against her mother to a real estate agent on trial for discrimination and racial profiling on behalf of landlords, they don’t lend themselves to quick judgments, and Ms. Markowic often leaves the verdict up in the air.

Frustratingly, the characters on the side of the law feel monolithic. The accused are far more individual. And some of the dialogue is forced, as when a judge tells a young Roma woman, “I don’t even know how I can still look at you as a human being.” The rhetoric pales in comparison with the subtle closing arguments drawn from real cases in “Plaidoiries.”

“Justice” underwent a transition after it premiered with an all-female cast last January. One of the actors, the well-known comic Océan, came out as a transgender man in the spring. When the play reopened this autumn, he reprised his role. During a recent performance, he was the most affecting person onstage, with precise timing and a wonderful ability to switch — playfully, seamlessly — between male and female characters.

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The production of “Révélation Red in Blue Trilogie” was created at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center in Shizuoka, Japan.CreditSimon Gosselin

There is justice of a less tangible kind to be found at the Théâtre de la Colline in “Révélation Red in Blue Trilogie,” a supernatural play by the Cameroon-born French author Léonora Miano, loosely inspired by the African slave trade. In tackling it with a Japanese cast, the director Satoshi Miyagi not only challenges our expectations of African stories but offers a creation of rare coherence and elegance.

In the playbill, Mr. Miyagi points out the similarities between Ms. Miano’s play and the Japanese vision of the afterlife. In “Révélation,” which is the first part of Ms. Miano’s “Red in Blue Trilogie,” the souls of African-born slaves are left to wander indefinitely instead of being reborn, because their deaths occurred away from their homeland. Alerted to their plight, the souls destined for reincarnation, known as Mayibuye, decide to go on strike until Inyi, the goddess of life, agrees to a trial of sorts for five African leaders they hold responsible, the Shadows.

Mr. Miyagi’s production, created at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center in Shizuoka, Japan, is a sight to behold: slow, beautifully architectural, framed by oversize moon-shaped cutouts and branches. Inyi is played by two actors, one silent, poised and doll-like (Micari) while the other, kneeling, speaks her lines (Haruyo Suzuki). Four women represent Mayibuye, with golden balls woven into their costumes to symbolize the souls they carry, while the five Shadows appear half-hidden behind large masks.

The acting is highly stylized, but it works. The Shadows represent African leaders who were complicit in the slave trade, and each is allowed to make his or her case before Inyi. Ms. Miano and Mr. Miyagi leave playgoers the space to understand the motives of the accused and decide for themselves whether they acted out of fear, ignorance or revenge.

A fair process, they seem to say, requires time and empathy; without it, justice, actual or retrospective, is never really served.